Understand (ATD)
Abstract
The Understand Advanced Technology Development (ATD) Project supports freedom of maneuver and informs commanders' decisions by predicting, locating, identifying, analyzing, and warning of chemical and biological (CB) hazards. Thrust Areas included in this Project are (1) Material Contamination Mitigation (2) Chemical Diagnostics (3) Distributed CB Reconnaissance (4) Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear (CBRN) Battlespace Surveillance, Alerting & Response (5) Diagnostic Building Blocks (6) Emerging Threats (7) Battlefield Readiness (8) CBRN Decision Aids (9) CBRN Situational Awareness (10)Enhanced and Emerging Biothreat Sensing (11)Technical Surprise (12) Clinical Evaluation Material Contamination Mitigation: Provides the capability to rapidly return to the level of lethality and operational tempo prior to CBRN exposure by mitigating contamination on equipment, vehicles, ships, and facilities; sensitive equipment, and hazardous waste to significantly ease burdens of decontamination and increase efficiency of decontamination process. Efforts within this thrust seek to improve contamination mitigation logistics/cost reduction, effectiveness, compatibility/safety, and environmental compatibility. Chemical Diagnostics: Provides innovative and integrated capabilities to the Warfighter that are able to diagnose threats across the chemical spectrum and enhance force protection by investing in diagnostics for exposure to traditional and nontraditional chemical warfare agents (CWAs), including pharmaceutical based agents. Efforts include coordinating with Threat Agent Science and the Intelligence Community and to understand the chemical threat space. Distributed CB Reconnaissance: Enhances early warning and situational awareness of biological threats while reducing potential Warfighter exposure using distributed biological reconnaissance tools to include low cost point sensors and sensing/collection systems for unmanned platforms. Efforts include developing threat sensing and sampling payloads for manned and unmanned aerial and ground platforms to enhance early warning and situational awareness of biological threats. CBRN Battlespace Surveillance, Alerting and Response: Develops algorithms that generate and disseminate warning to personnel in time to prevent exposure to or limit the impact of CBRN threats. This thrust area conducts data collection trials to support algorithm development; leverages Artificial Intelligence to identify key indicators, combinations of indicators, and sensing modalities to reduce false alarms and predict the likelihood of exposure; explores remote and contactless monitoring and analysis for application in Warfighter chemical and biological threat exposure alerting. The FY23 efforts include additional investments in enhanced biodefense and pandemic preparedness. Diagnostic Building Blocks: Develops foundational capabilities for the entire diagnostics portfolio; invests in innovative, cutting-edge technologies to improve the development pipeline for diagnostics; and exploits areas in artificial intelligence synthetic biology and machine learning to develop novel and rapid diagnostic tests for utilization. Efforts accelerate assay development timelines and optimize test parameters by leveraging novel concepts and tools that readily allow a pivot to assay development for emerging threats. Emerging Threats: Invests in diagnostic tests that enable the delivery of actionable information, such as administering the appropriate medical countermeasure, to greatly advance efficacy rates and turnaround time for Warfighter wellness. Efforts focus on better preparing for surprise by developing diagnostic systems that leverage novel approaches to characterize pathogens or host response and can identify the classification of threat (e.g., bacterial vs viral) from an unknown sample. Battlefield Readiness: Provides innovative capabilities to the Warfighter that increase the speed of relevancy, enhance troop preparedness, aid with triage support, and provides diagnosis at lower roles of care. Develops field forward medical diagnostics to provide multiplexed detection of biological and toxin threats and leverages immunodiagnostics to identify specific targets using current or novel approaches to enable broader and more accurate diagnosis for a range of targets and across a wider window following exposure. CBRN Decision Aids: Provides tools that assess risk from CBRN hazards and identifies courses of action to limit impact. This thrust area permits connectivity, enabling the dynamic discovery, querying, and control of sensors through standard protocols; and allows for dynamic discovery and integration between networked devices at the tactical edge to enable sharing of information and capabilities across connected components. CBRN Situational Awareness: Provides operationally relevant context to CB-specific phenomena data to ensure the Joint Force is able to characterize new CB hazards and mitigate their effects on mission success. This thrust area provides the analytic framework to determine optimal defense postures by extrapolating scientific data generated during the course of technology development and hazard assessment data into an assessment to inform operational utility. The FY23 efforts include additional investments in enhanced biodefense and pandemic preparedness. Enhanced and Emerging Biothreat Sensing: Establishes a capability to rapidly develop advanced, agile, pathogen-agnostic laboratory and field forward detection capabilities to detect emerging and enhanced biological threats across all force echelons (presumptive, field confirmatory, theater validation, and definitive identification). Further, multiple biological measurements will be used to modernize laboratory capabilities and leverage synthetic biology methods and tools to deliver enhanced biothreat sensing/detection capabilities to the Joint Force. Technical Surprise: Encompasses horizon scanning to identify potential areas of concern and conducts technical assessments of emerging technological advancements. Efforts assess technological advancements for potential implications to the threat space, including agent use and release and develops capabilities to evaluate and assess technical enhancements that may alter the nature or magnitude of a threat agent. Clinical Evaluation: Provides independent verification and validation of diagnostic tests in real world patients to decrease development costs, collecting initial clinical data sets to support pre-submission discussions with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). De-risks diagnostic platform development through third party, real world, and austere environment testing and evaluation prior to transition and establishes clinical and performance parameters therefore de-risking diagnostic platforms through real world populations.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Project
- Publication Date
- Oct 01, 2023
- Source ID
- UN3_0603384BP_3_0400_PB_2023
Related Documents
- Root: CHEMICAL/BIOLOGICAL DEFENSE (ATD)
- Child Accomplishment: 1) Material Contamination Mitigation
- Child Accomplishment: 2) Expeditionary Analytical Toolkit (ExAnT)
- Child Accomplishment: 3) Unattended Perimeter Monitoring
- Child Accomplishment: 4) Diagnostic Building Blocks
- Child Accomplishment: 5) Emerging Threats
- Child Accomplishment: 6) Battlefield Readiness
- Child Accomplishment: 7) CBRN Decision Aids
- Child Accomplishment: 8) Emerging and Enhanced Biothreat Sensing
- Child Accomplishment: 9) Battlefield Readiness - Biodefense Improvement Program
- Child Accomplishment: 10) CBRN Battlespace Surveillance, Alerting & Response
- Child Accomplishment: 11) CBRN Battlespace Surveillance, Alerting & Response - Enhanced Biodefense (ENBD)
- Child Accomplishment: 12) CBRN Situational Awareness
- Child Accomplishment: 13) CBRN Situational Awareness - Enhanced Biodefense (ENBD)
- Child Accomplishment: 14) Clinical Evaluation
- Child Accomplishment: 15) Diagnostic Building Blocks - Biodefense Improvement Program
- Child Accomplishment: 16) Distributed Biological Reconnaissance
- Child Accomplishment: 17) Distributed Chemical Reconnaissance
- Child Accomplishment: 18) Emerging and Enhanced Biothreat Sensing - Biodefense Improvement Program
- Child Accomplishment: 19) Emerging Threats - Biodefense Improvement Program
- Child Accomplishment: 20) Technical Surprise - Biodefense Improvement Program
- Child Accomplishment: 21) Unconventional Biological Detection Modalities
- Child Accomplishment: 22) Unconventional Chemical Detection Modalities